Future Narratives


Future Narratives
By harnessing the power of narrative, we can imagine and create a positive and sustainable future for our selves, our communities and our world.
Learn to harness the power of narrative for you, your community and our common future.
Future Narratives is a Erasmus+ co-funded project that aims to engage, connect and empower young people across Europe using ideas drawn from storytelling and future literacy.
The stories we hear and the stories we tell shape our understanding of our pasts, presents and futures. Future literacy enables us to understand how our stories can enable us to create our own future, enhancing our ability to embrace and imagine new possibilities.
Here you can learn more about the concept of Future Narratives, see interviews with experts, youth workers and young people, and share curated excerpts of our events taking place across Europe over the next two years.

Conni’s guest today is Binyam Sisay Mendisu. He completed his PhD in Linguistics from the University of Oslo in 2008. Between 2008 and 2016, he taught full-time at Addis Ababa University (AAU) as an Assistant and later Associate professor. Currently, he is serving as an Associate Professor of African Languages and Linguistics at The Africa Institute, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. Binyam’s research considers language as an archive of local knowledge and memory.

His (co)-authored publications include Multilingual Ethiopia: Linguistic Challenges and Capacity Building Efforts (2016) and Restoring African Studies to Its Linguistic Identity:
Reflection on Ethiopian Studies (2014).
Recently, he worked as an education specialist at UNESCO International Institute for Capacity Building in Africa (IICBA) leading programs and projects on teacher policy development, mother tongue and early childhood education. He is a member of the Global Young Academy, and an inaugural fellow and Steering Committee member of the African Science Leadership Program (ASLP). He also serves as Vice President for Capacity Development in the Governing Board of International Network of Government Science Advice (INGSA).

In this episode, Connie speaks with Dexter Tagwireyi. He is an academic pharmacist-toxicologist and Associate Professor of Pharmacy at the Department of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Zimbabwe. He has been teaching at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels for almost 20 years now and has supervised numerous student research projects at both these levels including 5 completed PhDs.

Read More ...
Today's guest is Sibusiso Biyela. He is a science communicator at ScienceLink, a science communication company in South Africa, and he is also a science writer for SciBraai, a South African science news website. He pursued his Bsc Chemistry in Physics at the University of Zululand and he is currently completing his degree at the University of Pretoria.

Sibusiso has worked as a news reporter, a television producer, and he has been a professional science communicator since 2016. He has been a public speaker at international conferences in the United States and various engagements in South Africa where he speaks about decolonizing science through science communication. His latest project has been helping to train a natural-language-processing algorithm to translate scientific terms into six African languages, all based on research conducted in Africa.

Read More ...
Our Guest today is Ayobami Ojebode. He is a professor of Applied Communication in the Department of Communication and Language Arts, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. His research interests are community communication; community governance; new media; and political communication. His works have been published in reputable outlets in many countries.

Professor Ojebode has been a visiting researcher, a visiting scholar, a keynote speaker, a consultant, a trainer and/or examiner in universities and research institutes in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, Peru and the United States. He delivered the keynote paper at the 2012 National Programmes Planning Conference of the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria (FRCN) in Akure, Ondo State, titled Radio programming in the twenty-first century: face-to-face with reality.

Read More ...
This podcast was born somewhere in 2016, in the small village of Nkozi in Central Uganda, not far from one of the spots where the equator line crosses the country. I had recently completed my PhD in Education and was involved in various projects in which we were trying to understand how we could improve the outcomes of our education system – especially those in the early years. For decades, now, the national assessments on the outcomes in the early years of schooling in Uganda had repeatedly shown that after 3 years in primary school, up to 7 out of every 10 children were unable to read at Primary 2 level and that by the 7th year of primary school 3 out of 10 still couldn’t read at Primary 2 level. The findings for numeracy were not much better, and it seemed that many other African countries were facing similar problems. The other reason it made sense for me to focus on the early childhood years is also that when these early basic skills are not properly developed, it becomes harder for children to acquire the higher-order skills that are the focus at higher levels of education.

Read More ...

A new podcast about education in Africa for our collective #futureframedTV podcast hosted by the amazing Dr. Connie Nshemereirwe.

Dr. Connie Nshemereirwe is an independent science and policy facilitator and acts at the science-policy interface as a trainer, writer, and speaker. She is the director of the Africa Science Leadership Programme (ASLP) based at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, and also works with the Partnership for African Social and Governance Research (PASGR) based in Nairobi, Kenya. Through organizations like these, she works with both academics and policymakers to contribute to evidence-based policy.

Her undergraduate studies were in Civil Engineering, but in later years she made the shift to Education by completing a master’s degree in the design of education and training systems at the University of Twente in 2004, later followed by a PhD in Educational Measurement at the same University in 2014.

She is also active in Civil Society through the Ugandan Think Tank, Kigo Thinkers, and speaks at and attends various public engagement activities on the subject of adequacy and relevance of formal education in Uganda.

Away from work, Dr. Nshemereirwe enjoys reading fiction as well as works on a wide range of subjects, from philosophy to personal development. She is also an active Toastmaster: a member of two clubs and founder of a university-based Toastmaster club.

Visit: http://www.futurenarratives.eu

The project was developed by Nerina Finetto and is coordinated by Traces.Dreams. The partners are:

Innovation from the global south – Hosted by Dr. Almas Taj Awan

Innovation from the Global South
A Traces.Dreams Podcast hosted by Dr. Almas Taj Awan
In this podcast, we will meet innovators and changemakers from the Global South and share with your their stories, their challenges, their lessons learned, and their hopes for a better future, a more sustainable and equal one.

The podcast is hosted by Dr. Almas Taj Awan is a Scientist and Entrepreneur born in Pakistan and based in Brazil. On this Channel, she invites technological and social Innovators from the Global South to share their journey and inspire the global audience.

The Global South includes Latin America and the Caribbean, Pacific Islands, Africa, and the developing countries in Asia, including the Middle East. In these countries, the recent trend is to solve local problems for and by local users.
So be ready to travel through the world of creative people from resource-scarce regions of the world and have important insights to get inspired.
For questions, feedback, or getting featured on this channel in case you are an Innovator from Global South, feel free to comment on youtube or contact us.

Thays A. Barreto is an Aerospace Engineer with 8 years of experience in the aerospace sector. Currently, she is an MSc candidate in Materials Science and Technology, an MBA student in Business Management, and the CEO of a new space startup called Beyond Space.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/thays-a-b

In this episode of #futureframedTV, podcast number 12 of Innovation from the Global South, Dr. Almas Taj Awan speaks with the founders of QazTracker, a startup based in Kazakhstan that helps farmers to track the health status of cattle and horses in real time, using IoT technology and Machine Learning and revolutionize farming in the country.

The guests are
Dinar Benseitov – CEO and Founder of QazTracker.

Technical background and experience in creating startup projects of more than 8 years. 2 years experience in Fintech Startup. Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Power engineering.
Miras Tursunaliyev co-founder of company. Operates as the chief financial officer due to his professional background. He has worked for several well-known international companies as a financial consultant.
The combined experience and qualifications of the two founders made it possible to have a balanced organizational structure and abilities to look at given problems from different angles.

What does it take to become an innovator?

In this episode of #futureframedTV, podcast number 11 of Innovation from the Global South, Almas speaks with Amirkhan Omarov, founder & CEO at Parqour, smart parking solution based on a number plate recognition algorithm.

The startup was founded 2 years ago and currently operating in 8 countries (Kazakhstan, UAE, USA, Russia, Ukraine, etc), in 200 parking buildings. He is an expert in PropTech (property technologies), and has over 8 years in innovations in Property & Construction as a Chief Digital Officer for the largest Central Asian real estate companies (BI Group, Mercury Properties). Prior to coming to the real estate, Amirkhan served as a strategy consultant at Ernst & Young and McKinsey & co for 4 years.

In this episode of #futureframedTV, podcast number 10 of Innovation from the Global South, Almas speaks with Marcelo Vieira, the founder of GreenBug Predictions in Brazil. The company uses remote sensing, IoT devices, and AI for forest protection.

As they write on their website “We love tech! We love nature! We help to keep our planet green”.
Instead of concentrating on fighting the fires, they try to predict them and work on avoiding them.

Here is the website (in Portuguese):
https://www.greenbug.com.br/

What do we need to disrupt and improve the health system?

In this podcast episode number 9, Almas speaks with the founders of Ana Health, a Brazilian start-up that wants to change the health system! Almas speaks with the inspirational founders, Vinicius Molina Garcia (“My purpose is to develop technologies that save lives”), Víctor Macul (“Building a new way of taking care of health”), and Olívio Souza Neto (“We are not a health plan. We are a new way to take care of you!”)

“We are a digital health service focused on preventive, predictive, proactive, and personalized medicine.

With our plan, you have a healthcare team to call your own. Affordable professionals, who accompany you in an individualized, integral way and for a lifetime!

We are not a health plan.
We are a new way to take care of you!” https://www.anahealth.app/

Let us plant trees and educate young people in Africa! Social innovation and change in Uganda.

In this podcast episode number 8, Almas speaks with Dr. Charles Batte, the founder of Tree Adoption Uganda (TAU) - a youth-centric NGO powered by the vision of creating communities where people and nature flourish.

Innovation from the Global South - Hosted by Dr. Almas Taj Awan is part of the #FutureFramed.TV. The collective podcast platform of Traces&Dreams.

Dr. Charles Batte was born in Kamwokya; one of the most impoverished slums in Uganda. He grew up in an environment characterized by lack of opportunity, poverty, crime, drugs and poor health service delivery. This early experience inculcated in him a spirit of social responsibility and a desire to create positive social impact that has been responsible for his work towards sustainable development.
Read More ...

LINKING SCIENCE, INNOVATION AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP | Science Entrepreneurship | Lucas Delgado-Emerge

How can we boost science-based innovation? In this podcast episode number 7, Almas speaks with Lucas Delgado, Co-Founder and Director of Emerge- Brasil, a company boosting science-based innovation in Brazil, improving its social impact and revenues.

Innovation from the Global South – Hosted by Dr. Almas Taj Awan is part of the #FutureFramed.TV. The collective podcast platform of Traces&Dreams.

Lucas is a partner and head of projects and new business at Emerge. He graduated in Industrial Engineering from the Federal University of Juiz de Fora (BRA) and had a corporate finance specialization from the University at Albany (USA). He has developed many projects integrating science-based innovation with companies of different industries, managing the assessment of technologies, and developing innovation strategies.

How do we reach patients in remote areas? What does it mean to start a start-up in a developing country? How can we have equal healthcare access across the Globe?

In this podcast episode number 6, Almas speaks with Dr.Leyla Taghizade, Founder of NewSpace Business Accelerator & Open Innovation and co-founder of Reseptron, a mobile health application to connect underserved patients with medical organizations in #Azerbaijan.

Leyla holds a Ph.D. in Healthcare Management from the State Institute for Advanced Education of Physicians and a Medical Diploma from Azerbaijan Medical University with 10+ years of experience as a CEO of the private clinic. Leyla is the co-founder of the Reseptron mobile telehealth application for patients in remote areas to enhance patient’s access to medical services. She is a member of AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science ) since 2016 and an alumna (2014) of the SABIT Program by the U.S. Department of State. She is the holder of “Female Founder Fellowship from the Founder Institute which is a Silicon Valley-based acceleration program for tech startups. Since December 2017 she is a regional reviewer and mentor at the Gist-TECH -I competition with the graduate mentees in the ForbesU30 list. As a mother of three daughters, she believes that supporting women and girls in tech can help to build a more sustainable economy. Currently, she’s involved with ICESCO Accelerator as a part of NewSpace Open Innovation.

How can we fight women’s harassment? What does it take to be an activist? In this podcast episode number 5, Almas speaks with Dr. Nova Ahmed an Associate Professor at North South University, in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Dr. Nova Ahmed is a computer scientist living in Bangladesh. She has finished her Ph.D. from Georgia Institute of Technology, USA, and came back to Bangladesh to make changes. She used her experiences of working with sensors to fight social challenges such as systems to protect women from sexual harassment as she returned.

She continued to use her work that could support marginal communities with low-cost, locally available solution approaches. She has worked with Google to explore the inclusion of women and marginal communities in technology. She is currently working on a funded project to enhance the inclusion of women in digital finance through enabling better technology designs funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Her work ensures social justice and feminist human-computer interaction.

Nova is one of the founders and one of the Executive Committee members of the National Young Academy Bangladesh, she is a member of the Executive Committee of Global Young Academy, Fellow of Sangat, the feminist network in South Asia, founding board member of Kaan Pete Roi: a suicide prevention call center. She is an active volunteer of the Bangladesh Mathematical Olympiad, Children’s Science Congress and Missing Daughter’s Initiative. She is the Chair of SIGCHI, Dhaka Chapter in Bangladesh. She has organized the Ada Lovelace Celebration to include more women in technology in Bangladesh for 2020 and 2021. In her free time, she is busy with her two daughters and a fun partner!

In this podcast episode, Almas speaks with Dr. Sudesh Sivarasu, an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Cape Town, South Africa.

Dr. Sivarasu completed his undergraduate studies in Electronics and Instrumentation Engineering from Madras University in 2004. He continued for his masters in Biomedical Engineering (2006) followed by Ph.D in Biomedical Engineering from VIT University, India. Dr. Sivarasu’s research is in the field of medical device innovation and creating affordable health technologies. He heads the Medical Devices and Orthopaedic Biomechanics Research Group at the University of Cape Town, South Africa.

In this podcast episode, Almas speaks with Dr. Iffat Zafar Aga, COO, and co-founder of Sehat Kahani, a telemedicine startup based in Pakistan.

“Affordable And Convenient Healthcare Access From Best Doctors In Pakistan. An all-female health provider network that provides quality healthcare to those in need, using telemedicine.”
Her startup has been part of some prominent global accelerators and has won notable awards which include SPRING Accelerator, Engro I am Change Awards, KITE-OSLO Local Competition, MIT Enterprise Forum, Seedstars Regional Event, Winner of “The best in Healthcare” at GIST (Global Innovation through Science and Technology) Tech I, Invest2 Innovate accelerator in Pakistan.

Let’s talk about providing education to out-of-school children in remote areas using technology.

Let the children learn!

In episode number 2, Almas speaks with Dr. Shahid Qamar is a Research Scientist and Social entrepreneur. Dr. Qamar is very actively involved in social and community-based projects in the USA and Pakistan. He founded Teach a Kid Make Individual Life (TAKMIL) which is an international non-profit dedicated to providing education to out-of-school children in remote communities of Pakistan. The organization has served around 2000 children in 30 communities across Pakistan through a unique disruptive educational model which integrates technology.

https://takmil.org/

In this first episode, Almas speaks with Tendekayi Katsiga, an innovator and CEO at Deaftronics, a company based in Botswana.

Tendekayi Katsiga is an electronics enthusiast who has developed the world’s first solar-powered hearing aid. He received training in North America, Africa, and Europe. He has been to all the continents in the world preaching the gospel on hearing loss awareness. His career span has attracted more than 20 national and international awards among them Builders of Africa’s Future Award in Silicon Valley USA 2020, Johnson & Johnson Africa Innovation Challenge Award 2019, South African Designers Awards (DISA), National Design for Development Award (NDDA) and Potential for Societal Impact Award in the 2015 GIST Tech-I Competition. He has been featured in the Newsweek magazine, National Geographic, BBC articles, Wired a high Tech Magazine in Japan, Daily Edventures Post, I am Youngpreneur, The Heretic, and Smart Planet.

Find out more here:
https://deaftronics.com/

Dr. Almas Taj Awan is a Scientist and Entrepreneur based in Brazil. On this Channel, she invites technological and social Innovators from the Global South to share their journey and inspire the global audience.
The Global South includes Latin America and the Caribbean, Pacific Islands, Africa, and the developing countries in Asia, including the Middle East. In these countries, the recent trend is to solve local problems for and by local users.
So be ready to travel through the world of creative people from resource-scarce regions of the world and have important insights to get inspired.
For questions, feedback, or getting featured on this channel in case you are an Innovator from Global South, please write a comment!

Virginia Cinquemani

Finding what it takes to become a sustainability professional

This is only important if you have a job

Today’s guest at Sustainability@Work is Virginia Cinquemani of Green Gorilla.

With her we will talk about the skills that today all sustainability professionals need to develop to advance with sustainability projects, collaborate and make change happen in companies.

And with sustainability professionals today we mean everybody who has a role in making change happen, in suggesting solutions to improve processes and products or to have a more positive impact on communities and areas where business operates.
So yes, count yourself in!

Virginia with her company Green Gorilla has written a book about this topic and since a few years she organizes training sessions and network groups to improve the skills of professionals.

We will talk about the skills that are important and the common obstacles and how to overturn them and we will talk about the power of networking and sharing knowledge and projects to wave new ideas and inspiration to the tapestry of skills needed to be a sustainability professional.

Here are some information about our guest


Virginia Cinquemani is the founder and director of Green Gorilla Consultants Ltd, a unique training and coaching company focusing exclusively on empowering sustainability professionals to become the most confident and assertive version of themselves, and to successfully accomplish their sustainability projects even when their stakeholders think sustainability is a waste of time and money!
Virginia is the author of SustainABLE: How to Find Success as a Sustainability Professional in a Rapidly Changing World, a practical guide for those that have a passion for sustainability but cannot make an impact.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SCOiHPSHWRYme05S1izonJZFNGRUgRJw/view?usp=sharing

GREEN GORILLA (uk) https://www.thegreengorilla.co.uk/
BOOK: https://www.thegreengorilla.co.uk/sustainable-the-book
LINKEDIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/virginiacinquemani/

And here are some good suggestions from her on how to go deeper into the topic we discussed>
Books:
Time to Think, Listening to Ignite, Nancy Kline (on the power of listening)
Atomic Habits, James Clear. (To build good habits and break bad ones)
Newsletter:
The 3-2-1 Newsletter by James Clear. Again, on building good habits. Each message includes 3 short ideas, 2 quotes, and 1 question to ponder.
Film:
My Octopus Teacher (Netflix). Such a delicate story!
2040. For the first time a futuristic movie with a positive and sustainable future.
Podcast:
So Hot Right Now. To survive we must use our most powerful tool – communication.
Platform:
LinkedIn
Bonus:
Meditation and mindfulness, it always helps me in seeing things in perspective.

Enjoy and if you liked it please share, rate and subscribe. It will help others discover the series.
If you have suggestions please be in touch with me via LinkedIn.

Brian O’Callaghan

Green recovery spending. Reorienting our economies to industries that will drive future growth

This is only important if you care about the future post-covid.

Today’s guest at Sustainability@Work is Brian O’Callaghan, Lead Researcher and Project Manager of the Oxford University Economic Recovery Project. He is an Australian Rhodes Scholar, Associate at the Boston Consulting Group, and Consultant at the Robertson Foundation, covering topics in Energy and the Environment.
He is also a consultant to government and business groups on issues relating to the energy and climate transitions.

Brian’s core research concerns the economic impacts of fiscal spending. He is particularly interested in the role that green spending initiatives can have in times of economic contraction and in 2020 co-authored the seminal work Will COVID-19 fiscal recovery packages accelerate or retard progress on climate change? .

His supplementary research interests include the economics of green hydrogen and methods for reducing perceived risk in renewable energy finance. He is a doctoral candidate at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, supervised by Professor Cameron Hepburn.

Brian holds a Bachelor of Engineering (University Medal and First Class Honours) and a Bachelor of Commerce (Finance and International Business), both from the University of Sydney.

Here are some interesting links to his work and the work of the Economic Recovery Project>

     ● Global Recovery Observatory: here
     ● New Report: Are We Building Back Better? by O’Callaghan and Murdock 2021 here
     ● Launch event recording: here
     ● 2020 Paper: Will COVID-19 fiscal recovery packages accelerate or retard progress on climate change? by Hepburn et al. 2020 here
     ● A recent article with Brian on Australia green recovery spending was on the Guardian.

And here are some good suggestions from Brian on how to go deeper into the topic>

     ● Book: Green Keynesianism and the Global Financial Crisis by Kyla Tienhaara
     ● Paper: Five Lessons from COVID-19 for Advancing Climate Change Mitigation by Klenert et al. 2020 here
     ● IMF Blog: How Governments Can Create a Green, Job-rich Global Recovery by Georgieva and Shah 2020 here

Enjoy and if you liked it please share, rate and subscribe. It will help others discover the series.
If you have suggestions please be in touch with me via LinkedIn.

Channel Sustainability At Work

Sustainability@work
A Traces.Dreams Podcast hosted by Samara Croci.
This podcast will interview people who are working in sustainability to understand how to bring sustainability to the workplace, how to activate sustainability projects, how to communicate them and engage people internally and externally. Samara believes that at the heart of the sustainability challenge are people and how we engage with each other, how we make more people care, how we convince to jump in a project, how we collect investments, how we change the world.

We will interview professionals from different walks of life and with different experiences to tell their stories and examples that can be applied every day in our sustainability challenges in our companies, communities, and projects.
Samara Croci is a communication professional with 15+ years of experience in communication, sustainability, storytelling, and video production. She is passionate about sustainability, how to communicate it and how to make change happen.

 

 

This episode is only important if you eat food 🙂 Join us this week as we dig deep into the world of worms with our incredible guest, Anna De La Vega, founder of The Urban Worm. Anna is a passionate advocate for small-scale, non-tech solutions to environmental and social crises, believing that they can bring communities together and empower individuals to be part of the solution. In this episode, we explore the fascinating universe of worms and their role in addressing the looming crisis of soil insecurity. Anna shares her insights on why worms are a powerful ally in promoting sustainability, and how her business, The Urban Worm, is on a mission to have worm farms in every conceivable place – from urban environments like houses and businesses to traditional farms and animal farms.
Read More ...
This episode is only important if you travel, go to restaurants, or drink 🙂 Join us this week as we sit down with Tim Etherington-Judge, the Co-founder of Avallen Spirits and the Founder of Healthy Hospo. Tim takes us on a journey through the world of sustainability in the hospitality and spirits sector, sharing insights from his quest to create the most sustainable spirit globally. Discover the critical role raw materials play in crafting spirits and the lens brands must adopt to make sustainable choices at every step of the supply chain. Tim's experiences with Healthy Hospo shed light on the state of mental health in the hospitality industry. Learn how this NGO is tackling industry-wide issues, raising awareness, and promoting best practices through an upcoming e-learning platform.
Read More ...
As an all-female team of three - Georgina Gilbert, Rebecca Openshaw-Rowe, and Rebecca Hinchley – are going on an expedition to Antarctica to challenge gender stereotypes and show what women are capable of! They are all firefighters from South Wales Fire and Rescue Service (SWFRS), Derbyshire Fire and Rescue Service (DFRS) and Mid & West Wales Fire Service (MAWWFS) and in the months previous to their trip happening at the time of the release of this episode they have visited numerous schools and companies to tell their story, their mission and inspire more people to show what women are capable of in every area.
Read More ...
This is only important if you wear clothing 🙂 Two fashion professors are interviewed this week about a new book they published based on years of teaching and exchanging challenges and ideas with students and professionals about the future of fashion and its ever-evolving sustainability practices. It provides a holistic, insightful, and timely examination of sustainable practices in the fashion industry and provides a framework that can guide professionals and students towards better practices.
Read More ...
This is only important if you have emotions :).

This week's guest is Renée Lertzman, a climate psychologist and environmental strategist who founded the project InsideOut. She is based in the San Francisco Bay Area and works with leaders and organizations who seek to scale impactful engagement across stakeholders, consumers, and employees on ESG, climate, and ecology. Clients include Google, VMware, Unity, and numerous start-ups and philanthropic organizations.

She has a MA from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and a Ph.D. in Social Sciences from Cardiff University.
Read More ...
Welcome to episode 8 of season number two of Sustainability@Work, a traces&dreams podcast, hosted by Samara Croci.

Plastic as a currency

This is only important if you use plastic products.

Andé Vanyi-Robin is our guest this week, Founder & CEO of Nozama.green, a company whose mission is to measure your sustainability. They use blockchain technology, among other things, to track plastic and improve its recycling process.
Read More ...
Welcome to episode 7 of season number two of Sustainability@Work, a traces&dreams podcast, hosted by Samara Croci.

This is only important if you live in a society.

Our guest this week is Miriam Juan-Torres, a social scientist at More in Common, an organization working to address the underlying drivers of fracturing and polarization and build more united, resilient, and inclusive societies.

In this conversation with Miriam, we will talk about the results of her latest study Navigating Uncertainty, a study that is currently underway in six European countries and that addresses issues such as Covid-19, social trust in institutions, immigration, polarization, identities, and climate change.

Furthermore, we will discuss ways to drive social change and the potential risks for the future.
Read More ...
Welcome to episode 6 of season number two of Sustainability@Work, a traces&dreams podcast, hosted by Samara Croci.

Valentina D'Efilippo is Sustainability@Work's guest this week. Valentina is a creative director and a designer of data visualizations. Among other things, she created famous data visualizations like Poppy Fields, Metoomomentum, and The Infographic History of the World.

A conversation with Valentina in which we ask if what we measure in sustainability is really what is important if there is something missing, and we then explore the world of data visualization, which is plagued by information overload and sometimes apathy. We will also discuss how to use data to connect, communicate problems, create conversation, and hopefully influence social change.
Read More ...
Welcome to episode 5 of season number two of Sustainability@Work, a traces&dreams podcast, hosted by Samara Croci. This week in Italian.

Questa settimana Sustainability@Work é per la prima volta in italiano ed ospita Enzo di Rosa della Marca del Consumatore. La marca del consumatore é un brand che dietro ha un’associazione dei consumatori che da diversi anni ormai in Italia crea prodotti sostenibili e con un prezzo giusto grazie all’aiuto dei consumATTORI come li chiama Enzo.

In questa puntata molto ricca di temi e spunti sulla sostenibilità della filiera degli alimenti parliamo di quali siano i problemi, di cosa sia un giusto prezzo e del perché sia cosí importante avere consumatori consapevoli, curiosi e coinvolti.
Il progetto di Chi è il padrone é un progetto che tocca molti punti interessanti di quali siano i problemi della sostenibilitá e di cosa ci sia bisogno per scatenare cambiamenti virtuosi.
Buona visione!
Read More ...
Welcome to episode 4 of season number two of Sustainability@Work, a traces&dreams podcast, hosted by Samara Croci.

Andrea Bury is this week's Sustainability@Work guest. Based in Berlin and Marrakech, ABURY is a fair trade lifestyle label that has now expanded to other countries with collaborations with other artisans. Having known Andrea and her story for a long time now I was eager to include her in the podcast for her work on communities, women's education, and artisans.

Read More ...
This is only important if you care about changing your industry

Welcome to episode 3 of season number two of Sustainability@Work, a traces&dreams podcast, hosted by Samara Croci.

Sustainability@Work's guest this week is Giulio Bonazzi. Giulio Bonazzi is the President and CEO of a company named Aquafil. Headquartered in Italy but with companies all around the world, it is the producer of a material called ECONYL®. This is the nylon that comes 100% from waste material instead of oil. It is used in the fashion industry to produce many kinds of sportswear, swimwear, and accessories. In the design world, it’s used for injection molding for furniture and for carpets.

Read More ...
This week's Sustainability@Work guest is Alessandra Capurro. She is a master's student at EPFL (https://www.epfl.ch/about/) studying space technologies and robotics engineering. Soon, she will begin working on her master's thesis with ESO (European Southern Observatory https://www.eso.org/public/) where she will help develop a project management tool to calculate the carbon budget of space projects.

In this conversation with Alessandra, we will discuss what sustainability in space means as well as the two biggest problems: measuring the impact of space missions and space junk. We will also discuss the role of space in the sustainable development of life on Earth and the role of the space community in strengthening our understanding of climate change and the fragility of life on Earth.

Read More ...
Physical Assets - always in the flow

This is only important if you and your company own stuff.

Today’s guest at Sustainability@Work is Cecilia Smith, Sr. Solution Engineer at Rheaply and project lead San Francisco partnership. Rheaply is a climate tech company that does resources management and has developed an exchange platform that helps world-leading organizations better visualize and quantify their physical assets.

With Cecilia, we will talk about assets and resources and how to make them discoverable, easily transferable, and more valuable in our global economy.

Read More ...
Sustainable development goals! Now or never! Can we save the planet with culture?

An event to make the Sustainable Development Goals real and inspire action.

This is only important if the future of the Sustainable Development Goals concerns you.

This is Podcast Episode #13 of Sustainability@Work. A traces&dreams podcast hosted by Samara Croci.

Today’s podcast guest at Sustainability@Work is Luis Prieto, founder of Mad Blue, the organization behind a recent summit event in Madrid, Spain, all dedicated to creating awareness and action around sustainable development and innovation.
Read More ...
How can we restore forests to solve climate change? A net-zero future by 2050 with the latest tech and science-based data. This is only important if you cause carbon emissions.

Today’s podcast guest at Sustainability@Work is Diego Saez-Gil, co-founder CEO of #Pachama, a climate-tech startup that uses AI and remote sensing to verify and monitor carbon capture by forests to help finance conservation and reforestation.

With him we will talk about carbon offsetting projects and markets, how they work, what are the challenges and how a company or any entity can start this journey and monitor their projects.

Read More ...
How to communicate the concept of sustainability in a simple way? | This is only important if you are interested in sustainability. SUSTAINABILITY ILLUSTRATED

Today’s guest at Sustainability@Work is Alexandre Magnin, a sustainability consultant and video illustrator who has a youtube channel video and collaborates with companies.

With him, we will talk about why he decided to start his educational video channel and what 30 videos about the most important and challenging topics of sustainability have taught him about how to share and approach these kinds of stories.

Read More ...
Re-imagining the spaces we live in. How do landscapes and design impact our lives? This is only important if you enjoy beautiful landscapes.

Today’s guest is John Goldwyn, Senior Vice President and Director of Planning & Landscape at WATG, a destination, and hospitality design firm.

With him, we will talk about the work of WATG with customers all around the world and how the concept of sustainability can be different for different entities and in different countries.

Read More ...
Educating the public about climate change through moms and why communication is critical to tackling the climate crisis. This is only important if you know a mom or if you are one.

Today’s guest at Sustainability@Work is Anne-Marie Kline, Chief Campaign Officer at Potential Energy for the Science Moms project.

Anne-Marie works for a no-profit startup agency called Potential Energy that wants to use the power of creativity and marketing to motivate urgent, collective action on climate change. Their latest and very successful campaign is called Science Moms and is all built around scientist moms explaining and sharing the science of climate change in a digestible, memorable and funny way to other moms.

Read More ...
Environmental journalism, from your backyard to the world. This is important if you read the news. Today’s guest at Sustainability@Work is Gelareh Darabi, an environmental journalist and correspondent at National Geographic Channel / Fox History & Entertainment.

Gelareh has reported from all over the world about different topics connected to the environment.

With her, we will talk about what being an environmental journalist means, how she chooses and builds her stories, and what works best to create awareness and push for change.

Read More ...
The travel industry declares a climate emergency! This is only important if you like traveling. Today’s podcast guest at Sustainability@Work is Kasia Morgan, Head of Sustainability and Community at UK-based tour operator Exodus Travels Ltd.

Podcast Episode #7 of Sustainability@Work. A podcast hosted by Samara Croci.

Samara is talking about the tourism sector, how it’s under scrutiny for its carbon emissions and impacts on communities and how the industry was hit hard during the pandemic.

Exodus travel is one of the first tour operators that in 2020 declared a climate emergency and took the opportunity of the pause of COVID 19 to calculate and reconsider their impacts and operations.

Kasia will share some of the projects they have in place and how they are implementing them within the company and with their customers.

Read More ...
Resilient cities.This is only important if you live in a city. Today’s guest at Sustainability@Work is Piero Pelizzaro, Chief Resilience Officer of the Municipality of Milan, Italy. Piero has 10 years of experience in climate change policies and urban resilience planning.

He is a big fan of the concept of resiliency and starts by explaining what it is and why he prefers it to the term sustainability.

We then discuss what it means to be a chief resilience officer for a big city and what are the challenges and strategies of his team.

Read More ...
Let's talk about ocean blindness today! This is only important if you want to have an impact. Healthy seas, healthy life. The power of NGO-corporate partnerships.

Today’s guest at Sustainability@Work is Veronika Mikos of the Healthy Seas initiative, a journey from waste to wear.

Samara has known Veronika for some years now and she has shared her journey with Healthy Seas at the beginning because the company she works for is one of the founders of this initiative. Healthy Seas is an amazing example of partnerships between NGOs and the corporate world to address problems that each, individually, would not be able to tackle.

Read More ...
This is only important if nature inspires you! In this podcast episode, we are talking about the challenges of building a factory or a corporate building in the modern world.

Today’s podcast guest at Sustainability@Work is Nicole Hagerman Miller, Managing Director at Biomimicry 3.8 for Project Positive.

With her, we will talk about the challenges of building a factory or a corporate building taking inspiration from the forest next door, and with the purpose of, not only doing less bad but doing good, just like nature does with its ecosystem services.

Read More ...
The Fun of Fashion without the guilt
This is only important if you buy online

Today’s guest at Sustainability@Work is Iris Skrami of Renoon.

With her, we will talk about the difficulties to find and buy sustainable products and make sense of the numerous interpretations of what is sustainable.

Iris with the start-up she co-founded, Renoon, is trying to solve this problem and to make sustainable fashion easier and more fun, without the guilt and the fuzz. To do so, they are using a proprietary technology they are developing with a team of engineers, data scientists, and marketers to offer a great platform both to sustainable brands who want to emerge from the chaos on the internet and for consumers who are looking to put their wallet where their values are.

Read More ...
Green recovery spending. Reorienting our economies to industries that will drive future growth.
This is only important if you care about the future post-covid.

Today’s guest at Sustainability@Work is Brian O’Callaghan, Lead Researcher and Project Manager of the Oxford University Economic Recovery Project. He is an Australian Rhodes Scholar, Associate at the Boston Consulting Group, and Consultant at the Robertson Foundation, covering topics in Energy and the Environment. He is also a consultant to government and business groups on issues relating to energy and climate transitions.

Read More ...
In this first episode, Samara speaks with Virginia Cinquemani, founder and director of Green Gorilla Consultants Ltd, a unique training and coaching company focusing exclusively on empowering sustainability professionals to become the most confident and assertive version of themselves and to successfully accomplish their sustainability projects even when their stakeholders think sustainability is a waste of time and money.

Read More ...
Sustainability@Work is our new podcast hosted by Samara Croci.

This podcast will interview people who are working in sustainability to understand how to bring sustainability to the workplace, how to activate sustainability projects, how to communicate about them and engage people internally and externally for a more sustainable future. Samara will speak with professionals from different walks of life and with different experiences to tell their stories and examples that can be applied every day in our sustainability challenges in our companies, communities, and projects.

Samara Croci has 15 years of experience in communications for advertising, media production, social media, and branding.

Read More ...

Reportages

Futureframed.media

We help organizations, universities, research institutes and conferences to convey their message. We offer content strategy to frame your narrative, multimedia production to communicate your message and content distribution to ensure that your story is heard. Through web clips, videos & social media we explain your projects, and document your events to an internal or external audience. The people we work with have stories worth telling and our mission is to make these stories worth watching.

Find more reportages at  www.futureframed.media

Listen to these young scientists and learn more about their work, their questions and why they believe it is important what they are doing.

We produced these four videos together with the Global Young Academy working group “Trust in (Young) Scientists”.

“Worldwide, there are worrying signs of falling trust in scientific knowledge. The denial of climate change, the anti-vaccine movement, and religious rejections of evolutionary biology are some of the most prominent examples, but they might be just the tip of an iceberg. The causes of this development are complex. But in an age of “hyperspecialization” (Millgram 2015), trust in scientific knowledge is essential: people simply cannot have expertise in all the areas that are relevant to their lives.

It seems that one of the core issues of the problem is that the general public often knows very little about why it should trust scientists, and how much work and care go into establishing scientific claims.

This GYA working group starts from the belief that by better explaining how science actually works, and by showing some of the faces behind the anonymous façade of “science”, trust can be regained.”

https://globalyoungacademy.net/activities/trust-in-young-scientists/

We produced this video together with the Members of the Global Young Academy Women in Science working group. Listen to these inspiring researchers. They speak about their work, motivations, and dreams.

Learn more about the Global Young Academy here: globalyoungacademy.net/

If you want to find out more about it, here the link.

A short message to all young women by the amazing researchers in the Global Young Academy working group Women in Science.
Learn more: globalyoungacademy.net/women-in-science/

This GYA Working Group focuses on biodiversity conservation from a biomedical perspective.
The aims are to preserve knowledge about the medicinal properties of different species, create a global knowledge hub for biodiversity and biomedicine, and develop new pharmaceuticals from nature while protecting biodiversity.The loss of biodiversity minimises the potential for harvesting new medicines and for future medical discoveries. This is due to the interdependence of sustainability of the environment, human wellbeing, and the development of new public health practices. The actions of our group will mobilise the skills and expertise within the GYA to address this issue. In addition, the Bio2Bio incubator group aims to create practical recommendations for the sustainable use of Earth’s finite natural resources for healing purposes and requests the support from policymakers. With the expanding loss of biodiversity, we must act now to avoid losing new solutions for human-focused problems. Read more on the Global Young Academy website.

Watch our video about the amazing project The Global State of Young Scientists (GloSYS), a research project initiated by the Global Young Academy investigating the community of young scientists in and from Africa.

Dr. Anindita Bhadra is a behavioural biologist, working with free-ranging (stray) dogs in India. While pet dogs are studied extensively and compared with wolves in order to understand the evolution of the dog-human relationship, free-ranging dogs in India provide the perfect model system for studying them in nature, and building an understanding of the intrinsic nature of dogs. As they have hardly been studied so far, Dr. Bhadra chose the dogs as a model system, shifting completely from her zone of training and comfort, social insects. This gave her the freedom to set up a research group from scratch, doing things that she had never done before, and exploring new vistas of research.

Dr. Bhadra was involved in the founding of INYAS, and was elected as the first Chairperson by the founding members in June 2015.

In June 2020 she was elected co-chair of the Global Young Academy. In this video, she shares her personal story.

You can find out more about her here: https://globalyoungacademy.net/anindita-bhadra/

Dr Flávia Ferreira Pires is Professor of Social Anthropology at the Universidade Federal da Paraíba, Brazil.

She completed her bachelor degree in Social Sciences. She earned a Master´s and PhD degrees in Social Anthropology at the National Museum, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

She became a professor at a young age. Since then, she has been leading various research projects, mainly aiming at understanding the everyday lives of children from their own perspectives and the macro structures that outline their existence. She has published over forty papers, book chapters, and books in influential periodicals and journals in Brazil and elsewhere.

In this video, she shares her personal story.

You can find out more about her here: https://globalyoungacademy.net/fpires/

Dr. Shalini S. Arya is currently an Assistant Professor at the Food Engineering and Technology Department Institute of Chemical Technology in Mumbai. She works in the area of Indian traditional foods, in particular cereal-based staple foods such as chapatti, phulka, thepla, khakhara, thalipeeth, naan, and kulcha.

Her work is focused on various aspects such as product development and standardization, nutritional improvement and characterization, chemistry and technology, staling, extension of shelf life using various technologies (MAP, oxygen scavenger, chemical, freezing, etc) for these products, all of which would have far-reaching significance in improving public health in India and that too based on the resources that are locally available and food staples that are regularly consumed by the locals. She has more than 50 publications in international journals of high repute. Thus, Dr. Shalini is indirectly contributing to improving the public health of the Indian population.

In this video, she shares her personal story. The journey that started with the curiosity and the passion of a child.

You can find out more about her here: https://globalyoungacademy.net/sarya/

In 2012, Eqbal M.A. Dauqan received her Ph.D in Biochemistry from the School of Bioscience and Biotechnology, Faculty of Science and Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), Malaysia, sponsored by the Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World (OWSD). Her main research interest is biochemistry, food antioxidants, and nutrition.

Her thesis was awarded for being an excellent thesis. She was appointed as a Post-doctoral Fellow at the School of Chemical Sciences and Food Technology, FST, UKM from July 2012 to July 2013. In July 2013 she was appointed as Senior lecturer at Department of Medical Laboratory Sciences- Faculty of Medical Sciences, Al-Saeed University (SU) – Taiz, Yemen, where she became Head of the Medical Laboratory Sciences Department at the same Faculty.

In 2014 Eqbal established a new program entitled Therapeutic Nutrition Department in, SU. She was selected as one of five winners of the 2014 Elsevier Foundation Award for Early Career Women Scientists in the developing countries (Chemical Sciences). Eqbal was selected to be a visiting scholar in UKM, Malaysia sponsored by IIE_SRF (USA) from Feb 2016 to Feb 2018.

In February 2018, she affiliated with the Global Young Academy as a mentee in the At-Risk Scholar initiative. In September 2018, she had been selected as TWAS Young Affiliate for 2018-2022. Currently, Eqbal was appointed as an associate professor at the University of Agder (UIA), Kristiansand-Norway through the Scholar at Risk (SAR) Network, USA.

In this video, she shares her personal story. The journey that started with the curiosity and the passion of a child.

You can find out more about her here: https://globalyoungacademy.net/edauqan/

The Global Young Academy gives a voice to young scientists around the world. To realise this vision, we develop, connect, and mobilise young talent from six continents. Moreover, we empower young researchers to lead international, interdisciplinary, and inter-generational dialogue with the goal to make global decision making evidence-based and inclusive.

Few would disagree that there’s growing evidence showing the terrible impact of climate change on our planet, but what exactly is being done about it? Although the Paris Climate Agreement is a step in the right direction, researchers and scientists believe that more focus needs to be given to the technological, economic, and policy dimensions of the challenge facing modern society today, as we are tasked with preserving the planet’s natural resources. Ahead of the World Sustainable Development Forum in Mexico City this week, its President, Dr Rajendra K. Pachauri, spoke to Traces.Dreams about the aims of the Forum, and the necessity in establishing long-term goals to lower greenhouse gas emissions, and protect the delicate ecosystems of our planet over the next century.

Johanna Döbereiner (28.November 1924 – 5.October 2000) was a Brazilian agronomist. She played an important role in Brazil’s soybean production by encouraging a reliance on varieties that solely depended on biological nitrogen fixation.

Alberto Álvaro Alberto da Mota e Silva was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1889. He joined the Brazilian Navy in 1906, initiating an important trajectory that would change the direction of development in Brazil.

Marcos Luiz dos Mares Guia (1935-2002) had his work recognized in numerous instances, inside and outside the academic environment. He is one of the most important researchers in the field of biotechnology in the country, Marcos was one of those responsible for the discovery of recombinant human insulin. He was also in charge of the foundation of Biobrás, a pioneer in the manufacture of insulin in Brazil.

Milton Almeida dos Santos (May 3, 1926 – June 24, 2001) was a Brazilian geographer who had a degree in law. He became known for pioneer works in various fields in geography, notably urban development in developing countries. He is considered the father of Critical Geography in Brazil.

We spoke with Dr. Marcia Barbosa, one of the directors of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences (ABC), about the role of science in Brazil right now and about the mini-series “Science creates development”, produced by the Academy.

“To glimpse into the future, tough, it is necessary to analyze the past and when it comes to the history of Brazilian science, the past is brilliant. Even though science financing was always inconsistent and precarious, Brazilian scientists were responsible for the invention of the polyvalent antiophidic serum; were the firsts to ever trace the entire cycle of a disease, — the Chagas Disease; and participated in the discovery of the meson pi particle. They have also discovered the bradykinin, a potent vasodilator that is used until now in the treatment of hypertension; Brazilian scientists were the firsts to complete a heart transplant in the Latin America and were the firsts to identify the Aedes aegypti as the transmitter of the yellow fever in Latin America.

Even with the great achievements of the past, today, more than ever before, the practice of scientific outreach has a crucial role on the destiny of science in the country. The creation of public policies that protect the investments in this field will be a reality only when citizens and political representatives recognize what the scientific community emphasized for a long time: science creates development!

http://www.abc.org.br/en/a-instituicao/missao/

We met Dr. Narong Sirilertworakul a couple of weeks ago in Thailand. He is the President of Thailand’s National Science and Technology Development Agency, an organization focused on increasing Thailand’s reputation as a global competitor in the fields of scientific research and technology, with the aim of modernising the country’s industries, growing GDP, and improving quality of life for the people of Thailand.
Dr. Sirilertworakul holds a BA in Industrial Engineering and a PhD in Manufacturing Engineering. He has extensive experience in research, management, and quality, and was a founding member of the Thailand Quality Awards. Dr. Sirilertworakul also serves as a Chairman on the boards of several innovation and technology-based businesses.

What we do

What we do

Traces&Dreams was founded in 2015 as a company specialized in storytelling, narrative, content creation, visual communication and distribution. The Traces&Dreams project aims to improve the dissemination of scientific and humanistic knowledge at an international level, addressing, in particular, a non-specialist audience and foster common knowledge about narrative.

The organization’s activity, therefore, focuses on three core areas of expertise:

1. Strategic communication (from planning to content dissemination): Traces&Dreams deals with the consultancy and implementation of communication strategy and content plans, in particular for institutions and organizations operating in the field of research and education. This includes support in the planning, production and distribution of content (mainly audio and video) and the development and support of online and offline distribution networks.

2. Presentations, seminars and workshops focusing on storytelling, narratives, future literacy, social media, humanistic and interdisciplinary skills.

3. Traces&Dreams is also an online content dissemination platform (FutureFramed.TV). It regularly presents content about research in different disciplines and countries and collaborates with numerous international institutions.

We also produce different video and audio podcasts in collaboration with scholars and institutions.

In particular, the Traces&Dreams platform aims to collect the testimonies of many international scholars whose research is aimed at building bridges between different disciplines, to create communities, common paths, and a more cooperative and sustainable world. For this reason, Traces&Dreams focuses its intervention in the field of scientific dissemination and the promotion of Narrative and Future Literacy. Within the platform, we offer their contributions to scholars in sociology, international relations, economics, history, biology, science and technology, communication, astrophysics, anthropology and education. A space is also dedicated to students and PhD students, who can make a contribution to Traces&Dreams in order to promote dialogue between different levels and roles of academic education.

The Traces&Dreams team is composed of experts in communication, audiovisual production and Web Design. Thanks to its experience in the field of storytelling and communication Traces&Dreams has been able to collaborate with several important organisations:

– Global Young Academy: production of several documentaries and social media material, collaboration for the creation of a communication strategy with several working groups: Women in Science Working Group- Biomedicine for Biodiversity WG; Global Health WG; Trust Working Group; development of a corporate visual profile, workshops on communication, storytelling, strategy and social media;

– United Nations Research Institute for Social Development: production of interviews as part of a conference on social inequality;

– World Forum Women in Science: Workshops on leadership and communication;

– Nordic Life Science Days: development and maintenance of social media communication strategy with focus on twitter. Live-tweeting during the conference;

– Brazilian Academy of Sciences: presentation and facilitation on storytelling and narrative; collaboration to promote the visibility of Brazilian researchers in other countries;

– Massachusetts Institute of Technology – Haiti Initiative: online interviews and collaboration to provide more visibility and traffic to the online portal.

In December 2020, our project “FUTURE NARRATIVES”, an Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership in the Youth Sector, has been approved.

 

Please feel free to contact us if you want to collaborate with us, have a project to discuss, a workshop to organize, or a story to tell.

 

 

Contact!

Futureframed.media

Futureframed.media

We help organizations, universities, research institutes and conferences to convey their message. We offer content strategy to frame your narrative, multimedia production to communicate your message and content distribution to ensure that your story is heard. Through web clips, videos & social media we explain your projects, and document your events to an internal or external audience. The people we work with have stories worth telling and our mission is to make these stories worth watching.

Blog & News

Blog & News

Curating the most innovative and thought-provoking ideas produced by our network of researchers and beyond. Here you can read our newsletter and access to our curated resources.

Academy

Academy

Education can and will change the world. Learn with us to think outside your tribe / see new possibilities for our future, and develop the skills to tell your story and reimagine our futures. We believe not only that the world needs new narratives but that narrative and storytelling literacy are key to imagine and develop a more equal and sustainable society. Our purpose is to democratize narrative and the imagination about the future.

Traces&Dreams AB

c/o Impact Hub
Jakobsbergsgatan 22
111 44 Stockholm Sweden
Org. nr: 559336-2196

Join the community

Subscribe here to our newsletters and learn more about narratives, futures, and positive change.

Copyright © Traces&Dreams AB 2024

Privacy Policy